The Bermuda

Memories

Craig, Brian, and Mira sat together in Mira's dorm room, cramming for midterms. Though they only had intro bio courses together, they enjoyed the company of each other. They'd remind each other to focus rather than getting distracted on their phones. The two boys were already used to studying together, since they grew up together. Their public school was small, living out in the sticks, and they had always joked that the class size was so small, they'd probably end up each winning half the year's bursaries. They weren't far off, actually, and ended up going to the same university. In first year, they met Mira, a pre-med student who immigrated several years ago after civil war forced her family to relocate. They became fast friends, all being nerds from small towns, and having a lot of the same interests and courses.

Craig was in for biomechanical engineering, but he was one of the only students in his program who didn't want to be a doctor. "Just research and tech", he'd say. He served his time on the farms, and now that he had a taste of city life, he wanted to stay. As fond as his memories were of growing up and swimming in the pond out behind the field with Brian, country living wasn't his thing anymore.

Brian, respectively, was going through for agriculture and gunning to get into vet school. He and Craig were clever, determined, and hardly argued despite being roommates for the last year, and friends for the last nineteen. Mira joked regularly that they were like an old married couple. Craig usually blushed and tried to defend himself, pointing out that old married couples were usually joked about bickering. This was usually jokingly met with Brian grabbing Craig's hand and putting on a fake voice saying "oh dear, don't make the poor lady upset, she thinks we're cute and by George we ought to keep up appearances".

Craig was often embarrassed when the other two made a big deal out of it. Always the serious one, but with a dry sense of humour that was indistinguishable otherwise, even to Brian. Brian, respectively was always earnest with his intentions, but his jovial attitude obscured the intentions enough to avoid making Craig too embarrassed. Brian mostly just enjoyed teasing his roommate and never intended to actually do anything, at least, not unless Craig was okay with it.

Mira though... she enjoyed seeing them being playful. Though she was in the pre-medical program, she found most of her classmates to be uptight, competitive, and restricting to be around. As an only child, and grew up in a fairly strict household. She bemoaned her fellow students she felt weren't taking full advantage of cutting loose and having fun. Not necessarily in dating or partying, at least to join a club that wouldn't need to go on their resumes. Or to hang out as friends once in a while. She never got through to them.

Though her parents pushed her from an early age to set her goals high, they didn't stop her from taking art in her spare classes. She initially chose it for the rush of drawing nude figures, but soon learned her own creativity was an entire mindset that set her apart from so many of her peers. Some thought her a rebel, which earned her a lot of unwanted attention from guys she had no interest in. She learned a lot of skills and a bit of a tough-girl reputation dealing with that too. This got to the point of other girls sometimes asking her for help to deal with the occasional creep for them. She'd help them, and they'd offer her favours, usually in the form of alcohol, snacks, or study notes.

The rest of her cash that she spent on alcohol, which her parents would never in a million years give her money for, came from risque art commissions. She would brush off her less than safe-for-work sketches as "just art" and anatomy drawings, to practice her studies and keep her mind sharp and creative. But she kept a secret sketchbook of all the more interesting commissions, and things she fantasized about, but would never be able to do. Sex between women, sex between men, orgies, mutual masturbation, and sex toy designs. She even drew stuff as simple as cute outfits she wished she could get away with wearing in public. She often figured she missed out on having a goth phase in high-school, and generally just missed out on a lot of things.